Andromeda Episode 26: Pitiless as the Sun

Trance gets tricked into an alien interrogation room while Captain Hunt solves someone’s problem.

Episode Summary

Andromeda orbits the planet Inaris, homeworld of the Inari (the same race as Captain Yeshgar), to investigate who or what has been attacking their freighters ‘o fertilizer lately. To provide assistance, Inari officers Major Whendar and her subordinate Lt. Gadell board Andromeda, which now has a refurbished bridge courtesy of Harper and Rommie.

Major Whendar tells Trance that the Inari have become very xenophobic, and encourages her to be a guest speaker at a university to help change people’s minds about aliens.

Held Captive

At the Inari university, Trance meets Professor Logitch – played by X-Files’ Cigarette Smoking Man. Instead of taking Trance to a lecture hall, though, he locks her in a room. We learn that the reason the Inari have become xenophobic is because a being that looked just like Trance recently visited their world and caused a civil war that killed half its population.

Logitch proceeds to experiment on Trance to find ways to kill her species, while also interrogating her. However, he isn’t able to get any concrete answers because Trance dances around his questions, employing mind games to wear him down, and he eventually sets her free.

Of Fertilizer and Pyrians

Back on Andromeda, the Eureka Maru is used to lure the mysterious freighter attackers out of hiding. These attackers are revealed to be Pyrians, squid-like aliens similar to the Melkotians in Star Trek. They’re incredibly elusive, and most conflicts with them are over territory – so why are they after Inari freighters?

Turns out the “fertilizer” these Inari freighters have been transporting act as a drug to Pyrians. Because of Inaris’ post-civil war economic problems, Major Whendar has been sending the freighters to Pyrian drug addicts for a quick buck, and the Pyrian government isn’t too happy about this. Captain Hunt arrests her and turns her over to them.

Thoughts

You could say I was entranced by this episode. I’m sure a lot of people probably have gotten sick of the whole Trance-mystery arc by this point, but I still dig it. Logitch was a pretty good guest star, and one we could sympathize with – his son died in the Inari civil war, and as he interrogated Trance he was all, “I don’t want to hurt you, but I have to.” He was like a kindly grandfather put in the role of substitute teacher to a class full of ruffians, gradually losing control of the situation until finally giving up and submitting to their chaos. You kinda felt sorry for him at the end.

Then there’s the part where Trance finally answers his question of what she really was by…showing him a bunch of galaxies in her eye? What was that about? Still cool, though.

Then the other story with the Pyrians wasn’t quite as interesting, but still wasn’t bad. I always get happy when I see a non-humanoid alien species in sci-fi television.

The drug stuff was a little meh, reminded me a bit of Torchwood season 3, but sure. I’ve seen worse.